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EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.
It must be confessed that Austria presents a splendid arrangement of practical and artistic educational agencies, and it is already evidenced that in the future they will increase rather than decrease. The principal trouble there is the extreme difficulty of obtaining a sufficient number of competent teachers. This will be remedied in the future, now that it is so generally recognized that the teacher’s post is a most honorable one.
It is safe to say that it is educated labor that prevented Vienna from sinking into a torpid state after the terrible blow Austria received at the hands of Prussia in 1866, so soon after her defeat in Italy, by the combined Italian and French forces. Her rulers were compelled to see, through the sober light of misfortune, that their true interest consisted in fostering industrial progress, and developing the resources of the empire. This had been done to a very considerable extent previous to the events referred to above; and because such was the case, the city of Vienna could not lose her prestige; but by continuing to work in the same path of educating labor and fostering taste, she has attained a greater degree of prosperity than she ever before possessed—fortunate in having men at the head of affairs who see the importance of encouraging industrial enterprise and progress in the widest and broadest sense; fortunate in having a splendid system of instruction by which the citizen is helped in his life’s work; and in having men who were already first in the trades and business for which Vienna is, and is becoming, famous.
A slight glance at the work done in the Austrian capital and its natural advantages will show the correctness of the assumption that the strength of this empire lies, not in her drilled legions of soldiers, but in the armies of busy, skilful» hardy, trained workers. The industrial progress so apparent in Austria may really be said to have commenced in 1860, when the old walls that encircled the city were thrown down, and new boulevards built on their site; and confirmed when her rulers, in 1866, were taught that a stronger military power existed than their own.
It must be remembered that, with all her educational facilities, Vienna could not have attained her present degree of importance in the world if there were not unusual natural